Vincent Van Gogh painted once an old deteriorating, half demolished church surrounded by a peasant's cemetery. Van Gogh rarely talked about his meaning in a painting but this was one of the rare instances when he did.  He comments on the ruins of that church, and says he wanted to show how the peasant farmers were laid to rest in the very soil they dug and tilled. He describes them as "sprouting up and withering away like grass and the little flowers growing there in the soil of that graveyard," Then he mentions with great approval, a quote from Victor Hugo: "Religions pass away, God remains!"